GDP - All posts tagged GDP

FedEx, known on Wall Street for preferring to err on the side of caution, delivered an uncharacteristically feel-good outlook to the market Wednesday. Management’s fiscal fourth-quarter report to shareholders practically gushed about near-term business trends. To back it, they raised their full-year earnings outlook.

Shareholders aren’t the only ones paying attention. Because it delivers parcels and freight around the world, putting it literally in touch with global commerce, analysts of many stripes view FedEx as a highly-relevant gauge of economic activity.

A look at what the euro-zone inflation and GDP numbers out this week mean for the ECB as boss Mario Draghi looks set at last to pull the trigger on monetary easing. Plus, U.K. job figures and inflation on the way: Is it time for the BOE to hike rates, and what could it do to the pound?

Most analysts agree that the euro zone is likely to have expanded 0.2% in the fourth quarter last year, but three questions remain to be answered: Can we soon call this a sustainable recover? Will we finally see a pick-up in the southern European countries? Or will the growth data be so weak they sway the European Central Bank to add more stimulus to the economy.

Euro-zone GDP data is out 10 a.m. London time on Friday, or 5 a.m. Eastern Time.

Stock markets took an unexpected beating at the end of last week and have a lot to recover in the week ahead if they are to reclaim the multiyear highs we saw in the middle of January. A slowdown in the Chinese manufacturing sector was identified as the culprit that spooked investors out of equities and this week we’ll get more news on the country’s oh-so-important manufacturing industry.

Didn’t get enough euro-zone action last week with Draghi’s surprise interest-rate cut? More could be in store this week, with third-quarter GDP incoming and two get-togethers for local finance ministers, the Eurogroup and Ecofin meetings.

And if you’re bored with euro-zone antics, then look no further than the U.K. The Bank of England’s Inflation Report will be picked through for hints of a shift in the joblessness forecast, while a report the same day will give a health check on the country’s labor market.

Plus, there’s lots of prominent earnings in the pipeline, including news from Vodafone and Italian banks.

Will Spain finally escape from recession? Will we finally see an improvement in euro-zone employment? And is the U.K. housing market overheating? This coming week in Europe may provide some of the answers with a raft of macroeconomic data on tap.

Five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers the economy hasn’t seen much deleveraging, according to panelists at the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) meeting Tuesday.

“We are highly leveraged,” said Richard Vague, managing director at Gabriel Investments, during a presentation titled “The Great Deleveraging: 5 Years After Lehman.” Deleveraging is defined as a simultaneous reduction in debt levels in multiple sectors.

Private debt is historically high, according to panelists, and there have only been two previous occasions when the ratio of private debt to GDP has exceeded 150%: the period right before the Great Depression and the period right before the Great Recession, Vague said.

Total private debt to GDP was 163% in 2012, and it is still 20% higher than in 2000 and 191% higher than 1950, he said.

Vague also said average GDP growth in the 1950s/1960s was 4%-5%, while recent GDP growth has been running at 2.5%.

Nokia
/quotes/zigman/162154/quotes/nls/nokNOK, once the world’s dominant mobile phone maker and the single-biggest player in Finland’s economy, has seen its fortunes decline sharply in recent years.

Rovio Entertainment

From 1998 through 2008 the handset maker accounted for at least 2.5% of Finland’s GDP. That fell to less than 0.5% in 2011, and went negative last year, FastFT points out Wednesday.

But even as Apple
/quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aaplAAPL and Samsung rose to dominate the smartphone business, other technically minded outfits have risen to make up for Nokia’s decline in the country.

The euro zone finally emerged from a six-quarter recession in the second quarter, but it could be too early to celebrate. Unemployment is still stuck at a euro-era high and it could take years to close the output gap created during the crisis.

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